


Burnt

by clayrlibrarian



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anxiety, Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Dubcon Kissing, Introspection, M/M, POV Second Person, Sad Ending, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 20:09:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9401069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clayrlibrarian/pseuds/clayrlibrarian
Summary: You wish you could cling to him and cry for all the things you've lost.The events of 'Parse' from Kent's point of view.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this was written nearly a year ago. It's an experiment in explaining someone's actions without excusing them.  
> That having been said, this fic falls under "things that can be enjoyed in fiction but should not be condoned in real life". 
> 
> WARNING: This fic contains a dubcon makeout scene and the pov character deliberately triggering another character. There's also a lot of alcohol and objectively terrible choices. 
> 
> Beta credit goes to Kate (kntparson on tumblr) who did a great job with this and is generally awesome

You’ve always been the tiniest guy on your team and the people who make fun of your height now are sometimes surprised at how little you care. Those people haven’t seen you hit puberty, your growth spurt lagging behind everyone else’s, the guys on your team shooting up like weeds and losing coordination as you skated circles around them, tiny and forever too fast to catch.

You hit your final height of 5’10’’ the same year the Aces make you captain, miles and miles away from the teammates you first learned to outskate. You suppose that year could’ve been worse.

 

When you were seventeen, you experienced the most perfect summer of your life, days of sunlight and discoveries. Days when the real world was far away and life closed in on you and the beautiful boy you were with and the memories you were making. 

You don’t think about that anymore. It’s better that way.

 

You were twenty-three when you made a mistake, thought back on that summer, wanted to keep your promises and share your success with the person who should’ve been by your side the whole time. 

You had to talk yourself out of wrapping your car around a tree after. 

Some promises shouldn’t be kept. 

 

Now, you’re twenty-four and there’s a chance to set right what went wrong. 

You know you might be making the biggest mistake since shortly after you won the Stanley Cup. It’s a chance you just can’t let go. Maybe this time he’ll actually understand.  

You’re trying not to get your hopes up as you make the drive to the shitty frathouse he has a tiny room in. 

It’s nothing like your penthouse in Vegas, nothing like what he deserves. 

 

There’s a party in full swing when you walk in, people and noise and alcohol and the smell of weed everywhere. For a second, dread sneaks up on you as you remember what he looked like drunk and high and happy at a party like this. When you actually find him, he looks nothing like that and it’s infinitely worse.

 

Jack Zimmermann had stopped growing when he was sixteen. He’d towered over everyone in the Q for a short while until your teammates started catching up one by one. You never managed. 

The last time you’d seen Zimms the lack of height difference had hit you with a vengeance. 

There had been a time when you fit together like puzzle pieces, when his arms had wrapped around your shoulders, your head under his chin and your nose to his chest. 

Just like that blond kid he’s taking selfies with right now would. 

You immediately hate him on principle.

It’s the smile Zimms gives him, the rare one, the one that is less ‘Zimms’ and more ‘Jack’, clear-eyed, focussed and unguarded, the one you used to see so rarely and no one else saw ever. It’s the way Zimms leans into his space, fills in gaps around him, makes the two of them a contained unit among the drunk crowd and lets the kid take a fucking photo of him. You've dedicated your entire life to a sport mostly known for its violence and you’ve never wanted to hit anyone this much. 

Who does he think he is to lean into Jack that way? Who is he that Jack lets him?

 

Certainly, he’s too important to Jack for you to cut into him. To rip his innocent smile apart until there's nothing left of him but a tiny, pathetic whipering mess. Oh how you wish you could, but you can't. Not if you want to get anywhere tonight.

 

You think you don’t sound too bitter when you announce your presence with a chirp. Maybe Zimms has forgotten how you sound when you use sarcasm to hide how hurt you are. You really hope he’s better at forgetting details about you than you are about him.

“I wouldn’t believe it if I weren’t seeing it myself. Jack Zimmermann. At a Party. Taking a selfie.” You know just what your smirk looks like right now. Cold, sharp edges carefully tugged behind stretched lips. 

“Didja miss me?” you ask and you’re glad about how good you’ve gotten at hiding the tension strumming through you. The days and months after the draft certainly had a sink-or-swim way of teaching you that.

You’re not enough of an optimist to hope for a yes.

 

Zimms goes rigid when he sees you. You’ve seen that happen before. You’ve seen anything and everything happen to Zimms before, seen him half-dead and ecstatic. He’s never reacted to you like that. To others, yes, but never to you. An actual punch in the face would go with this. At least it’d distract you from how it feels.

 

The blond kid starts talking to you, enthusiastic the way anyone who knows hockey is as soon as they realise who you are. 

The mask you wear for the sake of PR slips over your face seamlessly. You’re almost grateful for the time wandering among these people gives you to collect yourself. 

You’re definitely grateful for the asian girl and her challenge to play flip cup. It’s a brilliant excuse. If you’re going to even look at Zimms again at some point tonight you’re certainly not going to do it sober.  

The alcohol is fucking shit. It’s all pretty appropriate. 

 

It’s after you’ve been thoroughly destroyed at a college drinking game and with the voice of teenage Jack Zimmermann chirping you in your head that you realise actual Jack Zimmermann has yet again managed to disappear. 

You’re drunk so you don’t beat yourself up too much about being too slow. 

 

Zimms’ room is still where you remember it from your last visit. 

You knock and then enter before you hear a reply. 

You’re glad he never was one to go for walks when he needs to get away. 

You’re glad you still know how he reacts in any given situation. 

 

He’s sitting on his bed and he goes stiff as a board as soon as he sees it’s you. 

He used to relax at the sight of you entering his space. 

You try not to feel betrayed. 

 

“What are you doing here?” he asks, wound tight.

He gets up from where he was sitting, forcing himself to take up space, trying to make you more equal.

“Can’t I come visit you?” He’s too tense to talk about this, you know. This is not how it’s supposed to go. He used to relax when you entered a room.

You walk closer. 

He doesn’t back up. 

“No. Not really,” he says. The  _ anymore _ is not needed. Too much has happened and you still don’t understand half of it. 

You’re definitely in his space by now. The tension is palpable. 

You might as well.

“What are you going to do when this is over?” you ask, gesturing around yourself and meaning the cheap furniture, the throwaway college merch, the noise from downstairs. College doesn’t last forever.

“Join the league. Play,” he says, and you both know it’s not the answer you were looking for.

You catch his gaze. You still haven’t met anyone with eyes as blue as his. 

His eyes wander down to your lips. It’s not the first time in recent months that you’ve wondered if he still tastes the same. Hell, it’s not the first time this evening. 

Nailing down an evasive Jack Zimmermann is fucking impossible.

“For who?” 

“I don’t know.” You both know you’ve got him cornered in more ways than one. 

The set of his shoulders alone speaks of impending panic. 

You know this tone, the posture, the look. 

Jack is terrible at telling people things they won’t like. You know that. Jack knows that. Jack knows you know that. 

It’s obvious to both of you what he’s doing. What you’re doing. 

It fucking hurts to be treated just like everyone else.  

You loved him, you still do. You were with him through everything. You found him.

He hasn’t had an honest conversation with you since. 

It’s the one fucking thing you’re sure you deserve. 

“You have no clue?” you ask, because you never knew how to let go. Because he owes you the truth. Because you’re fucking pissed. Because you couldn’t stop fucking pushing if your life depended on it. 

You step even closer. There is almost no space between you and he still towers over you, but not by nearly as it is in your memories and dreams. If the tension between two people could strike sparks you’d be a fucking lightshow right now. 

He still smells like the detergent Alicia uses back in their home. 

You remember your clothes smelling like that over the summer before the draft. When you got to Vegas, after everything was over, you curled up around your oldest, softest hoodie, the one you’d brought with you when visiting Zimms and worn at night while sitting in his garden talking and looking at the stars because it had smelled like the Zimmermann house. 

You wish you could cling to him and cry for the things you’ve lost. 

“I mean…,” he finally says. “It could be Montreal, it could be LA, okay?”

Not what you wanted to hear.

“What about Las Vegas?” 

You’re aware that you’re sounding vulnerable now. You wonder if your voice shows just how broken you are for once. 

Jack looks like he’s been hit in the face. 

“I… I don’t know, okay?” And you almost believe it’s the truth.

It’s a tragedy, the two of you. The way he looks at you, like he’s sorry for so many things. Like there really is no coming back. 

You do the only thing you still can think of. 

You kiss him. 

You kiss him and it feels like those proverbial fireworks. You kiss him and it feels like coming home. You kiss him and it feels better than any of those irrelevant kisses you've had between that summer and now. 

You’re kissing Jack Zimmermann and there’s nothing in the world you could ever have missed more than this. 

He kisses back and it’s the most beautiful fucking feeling in the world. 

Until he doesn’t. 

“Parse-”

You don’t want to hear it and it feels like you shouldn’t be able to over the blood rushing and the exhilaration that might as well be panic. There’s no turning back at this point.

You kiss him again. There’s at least five trophies in your penthouse that you’d swap for getting more of this. All of them for getting to keep this. Your hands clenching in his stupid university shirt and you wish you could never let go until you let them move under its hem. 

One of his hands is in your hair, cradling your head, making sure you’re in the right place as your kisses turn more and more urgent. His teeth are on your lips and it strikes sparks through you, immobilizes any part of you that is not touching Jack right now. You almost wish he’d bite until it bleeds. 

The other one finds its way under your shirt. You wish there was no clothing left anymore, that you were closer, touching everywhere to make up for how out of synch you are, for how everything the two of you are is inevitably derailing. You’re getting what you’re craving for the first time in years and you feel the current coursing through you, feel the goosebumps originating from where his fingers found skin just above your waistband, tracing your hipbones. 

He breaks the kiss as your hands start wandering over his body, now under that offensive shirt of his. 

“Kenny, I can’t do this.”

It takes a few seconds for you to understand the words, too lost in finally -finally- getting what you’ve been craving for years.  

“Jack, come on,” you say and you know it’s not going to work, but if you had any hopes you’d fucking start begging right here and now. 

Instead, you go for it. Nobody who isn’t into it would be kissing you like that and you’re being an indescribable asshole but this is Jack and you don’t know how to let him go, you never have. This, you are sure at this point, is the last chance you have.

You’re good at unbuttoning other guys’ pants by now, mirrored movement posing a lot less difficulty than they did when you were seventeen and losing your virginity to the boy in front of you. 

He’s still all you could ever want. 

“No, I,” he stammers as you unzip his pants and your hands brush against his crotch. “Uh-” 

You can feel him getting hard and you really really need this to keep going, you just need to make Zimms come undone just one more time. 

“Kenny,” he exclaims before you actually can get anywhere, hands holding your arms and pushing you away, or pushing himself away from you.

Even if it's what he's been saying this whole time, pouring ice cold water over your head would be less of a shock than the sudden lack of contact is. 

You quickly remember why you were angry at him, what is happening here.

“Zimms, just fucking stop thinking for a second and listen to me-,” you spit out and the words feel like bullets. 

You’re only starting out. Why can’t he see that you could actually have it all? The two of you together again, both of you against the rest of the world.

“I’ll tell the GMs you’re on board and they can free up cap space. You can be done with this shitty team. You and me-”

Fuck. That was a mistake. You can see it as soon as the words about his team leave your mouth. His expression is cold and stony all of a sudden, all the conflict in him seems to have disappeared as he buttons up his pants.

“Get out,” he says. His voice is still quiet, but the tone’s cold. The words cut off. The space between you is larger and you realise that it’s because you just took a step back. 

“Jack.” You don’t even know what you want to say at this point but you can’t just not say anything. 

“You can’t- You don’t come to my fucking school unannounced-” he starts and, oh, that’s rich. As if you haven’t tried and tried and tried to call him, text him, email him again and again over the last few years.

“Because you shut me out-” you interrupt him before he can say anything else. He doesn’t get to be the only angry one here, you’re not going to let him get away with being that much of a self-righteous asshole. 

“And corner me in my room-” What the fuck else were you supposed to do?

“I’m trying to  _ help _ -” You’re not getting a word in here, though. A pissed off Jack Zimmermann is not a Jack Zimmermann inclined to listen.

“And expect me to do whatever you want-” 

If you didn’t know Jack so fucking well, you’d wonder how one person can be so fucking obnoxious. 

“Fuck, Jack!” you finally shout, and he stops for a second. 

“What do you want me to say?” you ask, a little quieter. And this is hard. This is fucking impossible. Whatever it is that it takes to have this conversation, you don’t have it. 

“That I miss you?” you continue and the strength to fight has left you. For once, you don’t want to fight anyone anymore. You wish you could still curl your hands into Jack’s stupid tshirt, stay close to him, have his arms around you.

“I miss you, ok?” And that’s the last bit of challenge you have. 

"I miss you." You say, and feel the words tear at the edges of your composure the way baring the truth to him always does.

"You always say that," he replies. Like that makes it any less true. 

Were you any less proud, any less hurt and defensive, you'd tell him the truth. Hell, you even would if this night hadn’t been what it has been so far. 

You'd tell him about the discarded drafts of thousands of messages across years and phones. About the hundreds of "hey Zimms how r u?"s you'd typed out in misguided hopes of reconnecting before you'd thought better of it. About the other messages, the ones that were infinitely worse. The "miss you"s, the "still can't sleep without your stupid snoring after a game"s sometimes, the "wish you were here"s, the "at their best and prettiest, nobody is as beautiful as you were to me at our most fucked up"s. The things you’d actually sent were not even the tip of the iceberg.

If you were any less proud, if you weren't made of broken glass and carefully concealed jagged edges, you'd tell him that sometimes, at parties, you climb into your teammates' laps. That they all got used to Kent Parson the human octopus by now, that as much as you love every single one of those assholes, they all still feel wrong when you do that. The movement of their breath doesn't feel right against you, their laughter doesn't tickle your ears at the right frequency, that - worst and most cruel of all - they smell wrong. They don't smell like Jack, the way he does even now, like his detergent and him and home and safety in times of desperation. 

If you were any less broken, broken in a different way, more likely to bend instead of breaking yourself and everything around you, you'd tell him these things. You aren't. 

The shards that are the core of you have never treated anyone kindly. 

There is no gracious way out of this situation anymore. Not if Jack doesn’t understand that you miss him every day, on the ice and off, that there’s a place by your side nobody else will ever fill. 

Jack doesn’t want reunion sex, Jack doesn’t want your feelings, Jack doesn’t want you fucking missing him the way you do. 

“Huh. Well shit, okay,” you say and square your shoulders. Your hat has disappeared somewhere while you were making out. Your lips are still tingling a bit and it fucking hurts. Everything fucking hurts. 

“... You know what, Zimmermann?” you start, because there’s nothing else left. 

“You think you’re too fucked up to care about?” You know he does think that. You’ve always believed he was wrong but Jack doesn’t fucking let you. 

“That you’re not good enough?” Jack’s better than you, so much better, you have seen this house and met his friends and kept track of him and he is so much better than you with your empty flat and your cat and your Cup wins and hook ups. 

“Everyone knows what you are but it’s people like me who still care,” you say and every word hits him like a blow, like you’re hitting him hard enough to break your own hands. The worst is that it’s true. The only people who’ve seen him at his worst the way you have were some paramedics who got him from some hotel or other, some doctors, and none of them actually knew him. You did, you do, and you fucking care. You can’t stop. You wish you could but you can’t fucking stop caring about Jack Laurent Zimmermann and there is nothing you can do about it. 

“Shut up,” he nearly whispers, broken and small and hunched in on himself. If you were any less fucking pissed you’d want to comfort him, card your hands through his hair and try to kiss him better, but instead his it’s his own hands in his hair, his face hidden behind them. 

“You’re scared everyone else is going to find out you’re worthless, right?” And it’s years of anger pouring out now. Years of ignored calls and messages, years of trying to reach for Jack and being ignored, unrequited longing and pain and no explanations that make you use the worst fears he’d whispered to you in the darkness so long ago.

“Oh, don’t worry, just give it a few seasons, Jack, trust me,” You’ve asked for his trust before, soft and quiet and hesitant. This is so much worse than anything you’d imagined yourself capable of. 

“G-get out of my room.” You can hear the anxiety, hear the approaching attack. Years ago, you’d trained yourself into noticing the signs and making sure Jack got away and to safety. Right now, there’s something very dark and very satisfied reminding you of hours you’ve spent in a hospital waiting to find out whether or not he lived. 

“Fine,” you say. “Shut me out again.”

You’re gonna hate yourself in the morning but that's nothing new. 

You bend down to pick up your hat from where it fell to the floor. 

“And stay- stay away from my team,” he stutters out. As if you want anything to do with these pathetic idiots who took Jack Zimmermann from you. 

“Why? Afraid I’ll tell them something?” you bluff, and if he was in any other shape than the one he is in right now, he’d know it’s a pathetic attempt at one. There’s nothing in the world that would make you give away his secrets. 

“Leave, Parse,” he says and finally makes an effort to straighten out his clothes. 

His pants are still sitting too low, his hair a mess. 

There’s a kid on the floor in front of the door when you open it. It might be the blond you nearly wanted to kill when you got here, the one with the selfies. Really, you’re beyond caring. 

You clear your throat. 

“Hey, well, call me if you reconsider or whatever,” it slips out because you can’t not always hand Jack Zimmermann the keys to some backdoor into your life and the admission is definitely not what you want to end this conversation on. 

“But good luck with the Falconers.” You’re not even going to pretend you’re not bitter. 

“I’m sure that’ll make your dad proud.” And the worst thing is that Bob  _ will be _ proud. That Jack could get his phD in History and his dad would be proud, he could become a figure skater or join the fucking circus or become a model and his dad would be proud. You have no idea how Jack doesn’t see it, but it’s the cheapest shot at Jack Zimmermann anyone could take. 

It always works. 

You leave. 

  
  


The self-hate floods you as soon as the words leave your mouth. It overshadows the satisfaction at seeing that you can still affect Jack, that you can still push his buttons. Anything you could’ve gotten from this is drowned out before you can feel it. 

You've learned to mask these things long ago, to the point where you could celebrate while desperately scared you were losing the boy you loved.

None of these loser strangers will notice the things happening in your brain in the selfies they ask you for as you slowly make your way out. 

You wish you could've somehow gotten away with stealing his comforter so you could've had something that smells like him when you curl up in your bed and cry tonight. 

_ Congratulations, Parson, _ you think to yourself as you get into a car you definitely shouldn’t be driving right now.  _ You’ve doused that particular bridge in gasoline and blown it the fuck up for good measure. Spectacular special effects and destruction, that's what you're good at. _

**Author's Note:**

> Loved it? Hated it? Wanna do the verbal equivalent of throwing eggs at me? I'm cinnamonroyalty on tumblr, come talk to me!


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